Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton defended her brother Tony Rodham yesterday for helping a Nashville couple who raised thousands for the Democrats win a pardon for their 1982 bank-fraud convictions.

“These are people he’s known for some time,” Clinton said of Ed and Vonna Jo Gregory. “He has a personal relationship with them . . . He was not paid.”

Speaking with reporters in Washington, Clinton said “there’s a distinction” between Tony’s efforts for the Gregorys and her brother Hugh accepting $400,000 to help a snake-oil swindler and a cocaine dealer get pardons.

Tony’s work is different from Hugh “taking money on behalf of people he didn’t have a personal relationship with,” she said.

“These are people who are good friends of the president and mine. We know them personally . . . they are not strangers,” she said.

The Gregorys were granted pardons last March after being convicted of using their influence to have five small Alabama banks they owned grant loans to friends – including $32,400 to Robert Stapleton, ex-President Jimmy Carter’s brother-in-law.

They were sentenced to probation.

Gregory, 63, told The Post yesterday that Tony Rodham, who worked for him as a consultant, played “little to no role” in the president’s decision to grant the pardons.

He said he enlisted the help a Miami law firm, which took it from there. “I never went to the Justice Department, nor did my wife,” Gregory told The Post.

Asked if he deserved the pardon, he said: “The president of the United States doesn’t issue a pardon based on whether someone is guilty or not. It’s a sign of forgiveness or mercy.”

Gregory is no stranger to controversy. The wealthy Nashville entrepreneur came out of nowhere to become one of the Democratic Party’s leading fund-raisers.

He and Vonna Jo supported Carter’s presidential campaign “very enthusiastically” and later backed Bill Clinton, whom they met while he was governor of Arkansas.

In 1995, the couple met Tony and, as a result of Tony’s recommendation, Gregory’s company, United Shows of America, staged a carnival on the White House lawn in June 1998. The company also ran the White House carnival in July. Gregory quit school at 17 to join the Navy.

One day, he picked up a soldier hitchhiker who took him home. There he met Vonna Jo and they were married two weeks later.

In 1958, when he was 20, he began selling cars and, in a few years, had his own dealership and was investing in real estate. By the time he was 40, he owned a $1 million plane.

Gregory sparked headlines last month when he received a three-year contract to run the Florida State Fair from outgoing state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford, a buddy.

Gregory insisted there was “no conflict of any kind” because his company had staged nine previous Florida fairs.